https://doi.org/10.67147/literariness.v1i3.048
Beyond the Autonomous Self: A Postcolonial Critique of Existentialism in Amitav Ghosh’s Fiction
YOGITA
PhD Scholar
Department of English
Bhagat Phool Singh Mahila Vishwavidyalaya, Khanpur Kalan, Haryana, India
yogitamalik019@gmail.com
Abstract: This paper examines Amitav Ghosh’s Sea of Poppies as a palimpsestic text whose reinterpretation of the Indian Ocean in the 19th century revolves around concepts of diaspora, communal memory, and intercultural fusion. Against the context of the British opium trade and the replacement of slavery with indentured labor, the paper discusses the role played by the Ibis, a former slave ship, as a third space, where a community of displaced and traumatized individuals such as lascars and coolies come together. This paper analyses memorial discourses in the form of farewell songs and extinct languages like lascari to illustrate how Ghosh employs vernacular cosmopolitanism to resist the process of colonization. The analysis shows how crossing the Kala Pani (the black waters) functions as the beginning of the process of cultural metissage that challenges the existing caste-based hierarchy by establishing a concept-based hierarchy through the concept of ship-siblingship of the jahajbhais. Finally, it is argued that Ghosh’s polyphonic narrative restores the subaltern history by reclaiming the Indian Ocean as an intensive space of identity construction.
Keywords: Postcolonialism, Existentialism, Subaltern History, Jahajbhai, Vernacular Cosmopolitanism, Indian Ocean Studies
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